Wheel of death

If you mean the spinning colorwheel, that is an artifact of Mac OS X, not Classic, although older Macs with Classic may exhibit slowness while running Mac OS 9 in emulation on top of Mac OS X. Please use this tip to go to the right Mac OS X forum:

Site map of Communities and Categories

After going to Apple Menu -> About this Mac.

Use this FAQ* of mine to address speed issues in Mac OS X:

http://www.macmaps.com/Macosxspeed.html

* Links to my pages may give me compensation.